Accepting threatening information: Self‐affirmation and the reduction of defensive biases

“As in the mindfulness research reviewed here, self-enhancement manipulations have been shown to make individuals more open and objective in evaluating threatening information ( Correll, Spencer, & Zanna, 2004 ; Sherman & Cohen, 2002 ).”

“…and prejudice, alleviates " hardening of the attitudes " under conditions of uncertainty, and increases openness to negative or threatening information, thus facilitating learning (Fein & Spencer, 1997; McGregor, Zanna, Holmes, & Spencer, 2001; Sherman & Cohen, 2002; Steele, 1988; Tesser, 2000).”

“These consequences could substantially diminish her welfare—materially and psychically (Sherman & Cohen, 2002; Akerlof & Kranton, 2000; Hillman, 2010).”

“On the psychological side, affirmations of personal values can attenuate perceptions of threat (Keough, 1998; Sherman & Cohen, 2002; Steele, 1988), reduce rumination after failure (Koole, Smeets, van Knippenberg, & Dijksterhuis, 1999), and reduce defensive responses to threatening information…”

“Others have reviewed self-affirmation theory (Aronson, Cohen, & Nail, 1999 ; Sherman & Cohen, 2002 , 2006 ; Steele, 1988 ); however, our goal was to review the manipulations of self-affirmation that are employed to test the theory.”

“As noted, these processes also share an important shortcoming: They are defensive in nature (see Sherman & Cohen, 2002).”

“Finally, when vital aspects of one’s worldview are affirmed, self-protective mechanisms such as the defensive denial of threats or challenges to one’s beliefs are reduced (Cohen et al., 2000; Sherman & Cohen, 2002), which implies that self-esteem is protected.”

“Recently, however, self-affirmation has been shown to reduce this tendency to resist information that challenges prior beliefs (Sherman & Cohen, 2002).”

“…improve understanding, people seem to be motivated to discount both the source and the content of a challenging message in an effort to protect their existing beliefs (Cohen, Aronson, & Steele, 2000; Reed & Aspinwall, 1998; Sherman, Nelson, & Steele, 2000; for a review, see Sherman & Cohen, 2002).”

“Consistent with the notion that most avoidant tendencies derive from a motive to protect self-worth or the integrity of the self (see Sherman & Cohen, 2002), repressor behaviors are evidenced most clearly in situations that present a threat to self-evaluation (e.g., Barger, Kircher, & Croyle, 1997;…”

“…colleagues (Steele, 1988; Steele & Liu, 1983) and elaborated subsequently by Steele and others (e.g., Fein & Spencer, 1997; Reed & Aspinwall, 1998; Sherman & Cohen, 2002; Sherman, Nelson, & Steele, 2000; Tesser, Crepaz, Collins, Cornell, & Beach, 2000), self-affirmation often entails the explicit…”

“In addition, we tested SA as a potential moderator of defensive reactions because affirming self-worth promotes security and paves the way to reacting with greater equanimity to threat (Sherman & Cohen, 2002; Sherman & Kim, 2005).”

“On the other hand, because different aspects of the self are linked and value is somewhat fluid between them, bolstering one part of one’s identity can protect other parts from threats or the whole from integrity threat (Cohen & Sherman, 2014; Sherman & Cohen, 2002).”

“…and thereby reduce the psychological impact of threatening feedback and social-evaluative stress both in the laboratory (Creswell et al., 2005; Koole, Smeets, Van Knippenberg, & Dijksterhuis, 1999; Sherman & Cohen, 2002) and in actual classroom settings (Cohen, Garcia, Apfel, & Master, 2006).”

“When self-affirmed in this manner, people have less need to distort or reconstrue the provoking threat and can respond to the threatening information in a more open and even-handed manner (Sherman & Cohen, 2002; Steele, 1988).”

“A long-standing body of work in social psychology suggests that individuals are motivated to fit their beliefs to those of people with whom they are intimately connected (Sherman & Cohen 2002; Chen, Duckworth & Chaiken 1999; Kunda 1990).”

“…that in order to preserve one’s self-integrity people tend to seek out and accept feedback information that is more aligned with their positive selfimage (Blanton, Pelham, DeHart, & Carvallo, 2001; Sherman & Cohen, 2002), which can be seen as an attempt to avoid dissonance-arousing information.”

“That is, the impact of the selfenhancement motive on a given judgment or behavior is reduced when people are provided with an alternative method of affirming the self (Fein & Spencer, 1997; Gramzow & Gaertner, 2005; Sherman & Cohen, 2002).”

“Our research adopts the approach of self-affirmation theory (Sherman & Cohen, 2002; Steele, 1988) to address these issues.”

“Researchers have shown that individuals who are either personally affirmed or exposed to group-affirming stimuli thereafter display less bias when processing information that is contrary to beliefs dominantly held by their peers (Cohen et al. 2000; Sherman & Cohen 2002; Cohen et al. in press).”

“Social psychological research shows that people tend to reject self-incriminating information in order to protect a positive sense of self-worth (reviewed in Sherman & Cohen, 2002).”

“In the present research, we compare two strategies that are aimed at diminishing the detrimental effects of social identity threat and improving performance motivation in status-defining domains: selfaffirmation (Steele, 1988), which is directed at restoring personal identity, and group affirmation…”

“Evidence suggests that self-affirmation reduces feelings of threat (Sherman & Cohen, 2002), increases the acceptance of personal health information (Sherman, Nelson, & Steele, 2000), and can promote healthy behaviors (Epton & Harris, 2008).”

“Self-affirmation interventions have been shown to make potentially worldview-inconsistent corrections “easier to swallow”—affirming a person’s values makes them more open to worldview-inconsistent information, presumably by fostering resilience to the inherent identity threat [29, 30].”

“…domain is less threatening when domains unrelated to the provoking threat are affirmed, and as a result, individuals react with fewer defensive biases (Aronson, Blanton, & Cooper, 1995; Aronson, Cohen, & Nail, 1999; Derks, van Laar, & Ellemers, 2009; Sherman & Cohen, 2002; 2006; Steele, 1988).”

“And self-affirmation research has established that affirming cherished values mitigates defensiveness (e.g., Sherman & Cohen, 2002), consistent with terror management research.”

“Study 2 Self-affirmation theory proposes that one of our primary social motivations is to achieve and maintain a sense of integrity and self-worth (Sherman & Cohen, 2006; Steele, 1988; Steele & Liu, 1983).”

“whether the negative feedback was deserved and looking for ways to deflect their implications for the self to protect self-esteem.(51,52) When the recipient of such negative feedback is also stigmatized, another factor comes into play— perhaps it was deserved, perhaps not, and perhaps the rejection or negative evaluat…”

“Finally, self-affirmation theorists might argue that our manipulation of acceptance in Study 2 was actually a subtle selfaffirmation manipulation (e.g., see Sherman & Cohen, 2002; Steele & Liu, 1983 ).”

“One way is through defensive biases in how they process the threatening information (Sherman & Cohen 2002).”

“Individuals conform their factual perceptions to their values in part to avoid the psychic costs of believing that societal well-being depends on either restricting practices essential to their identities or promoting activities inimical to them (Sherman & Cohen, 2002; Kahan et al., 2007).”

“However, self-affirmation theory postulates that people’s self-systems can be flexible and that theremaybeother responses to threats, such as reinterpreting uncomfortable information or focusing on other positive aspects of the self (Sherman and Cohen 2002, 2006; Steele, Spencer, and Lynch, 1993).”

“Rejection of the photoageing risk could represent defensiveness because failing to accept a threatening message ‘protects self-worth shielding people from the conclusion that their beliefs or actions were misguided’ (Sherman & Cohen, 2002, p. 119).”

“…be accomplished by instructing participants to write about their personal core-values (see McQueen & Klein, 2006), a manipulation that has proven to be effective in creating openness to threat (Sherman & Cohen, 2002) and in reducing biased evaluations (Stone, Whitehead, Schmader, & Focella, 2011).”

“…also because previous research on the effects of self-affirmation (e.g., Cohen et al., 2006; Koole & Van Knippenberg, 2007; Martens et al., 2006; Sherman & Cohen, 2002) and group affirmation (Derks, Van Laar & Ellemers, 2006; 2009; Sherman et al., 2007) has convincingly demonstrated the…”

“To preserve their self-concept, people are more likely to seek out and accept feedback information that is aligned with their positive selfimage [43,44].”

“…decisions such as the use of narratives or stories, or first-hand accounts of others’ experiences (Dillard, Fagerlin, Dal Cin, Zikmund-Fisher, & Ubel, 2010), self-affirmation manipulations (Sherman & Cohen, 2002), or increasing risk perceptions (Brewer et al., 2007) may also be effective.”

“Under certain emotional conditions, especially when one’s esteem is affirmed, even threatening information can be accepted and used (Sherman & Cohen, 2002).”

“It has been shown that defensive processing of threatening health messages is eliminated when people are self-affirmed in unrelated ways—for example, by thinking about values important to them (e.g., Klein and Harris 2009; Reed and Aspinwall 1998; Sherman and Cohen 2002).”

“Consequently, just as self-affirmation enables people to be more open-minded toward their personal failures (Sherman & Cohen, 2002), group affirmation may have allowed participants to reflect on their ingroup’s wrongdoing without justifying or dismissing the harm inflicted, thus freeing them to…”

“Sherman and Cohen (2002) reviewed studies indicating that self-affirmation may be a particularly effective way to reduce egodefensive responses to counterattitudinal information.”

“…problems that might befall them, people who have affirmed the self show reduced defensiveness and vow to make positive behavioral changes more than nonaffirmed persons do (Harris et al., 2007; Harris & Napper, 2005; Reed & Aspinwall, 1998; Sherman & Cohen, 2002; Sherman, Nelson, & Steele, 2000).”

“…or thirstier, and threatening one's self or group identity has been shown to engage self or group protective motives (e.g., Fein & Spencer, 1997; Sherman & Cohen, 2002; Steele & Liu, 1983), threatening the sociopolitical system through broad challenges to system legitimacy has been shown to…”

“According to Steele (1988), a threat to self-integrity lies at the heart of self-affirmation effects, by serving as the motivation to secure a self-view as adequate.”

“Indeed, interventions in which people affirm their positive values have been shown to reduce defensiveness and lead to healthier behavioral intentions (62); (103).”

“another activity that makes salient important values unconnected to the threatening event (Sherman and Cohen 2002), and research on mental contrasting that posits that when people realize that there is a discrepancy between”

“It has been shown that accounts of the history of the social group to which an individual belongs evoke shame or pride even when the respondents cannot be held in any way accountable for recounted events ( Doosje, Branscombe, Spears, & Manstead, 1998 ; Sherman & Cohen, 2002 ).”

“In this sense, valuing both agentic and communal traits serves as an affirmation of that identity at the same time that it broadens the identity (Sherman and Cohen, 2002; Derks et al., 2009; Glasford et al., 2009; Spencer-Rodgers et al., 2016).”

“Moreover, Sherman and Cohen (2002) showed that an opportunity to self-affirm reduces defensive responses to failure, hereby increasing the opportunity for individuals to improve performance.”

“Many responses to threats to selfintegrity involve defensive psychological alterations aimed at denying, rejecting, or transforming the threat in order to restore self-worth (D. K. Sherman & Cohen, 2002; D. K. Sherman & Hartson, 2011).”